Identity Crisis
by Essy Lasaylan
Summary: Harry hasn't been himself recently...


She wonders who her boyfriend really is.

Because Harry hardly seems like himself these days. The battle against the dark lord would be enough to alter anybody's personality, but still the change in Harry seems excessive. So she worries and she wonders.

He doesn't confide in her much any more. Not so long ago, they could tell each other anything. These days they only ever seem to talk about school and the war. Oh yes, always the war, they have long discussions about what the Order is up to and how much they've discovered about Voldemort, but they never talk about their _feelings_ anymore.

Sometimes she thinks he must be seeing somebody else behind her back.

That would explain the way he's becoming so forgetful about their relationship, his wandering concentration and guilty silences. The way she's suddenly become the one who has to initiate all their kisses, when he used to be so eager. The way that...

_say it_

...the way that even his kisses seem somehow altered these days. It's probably her imagination, but what other possible answer for that is there, except another girl? Somebody else, training his lips into new positions, slowly taking him away from her. Ugh!

She shudders.

Tonight she's going to speak to him. Tonight she's going to demand an explanation.

What if he chooses the other girl over her? What if it's one of her friends? What if there is no other girl and he's simply outgrown her? Surely she would have noticed, but then she understands so little about Harry these days. So little about the person behind his eyes.

She wonders who her boyfriend really is.

She waits until almost midnight, then she wraps a heavy winter cloak over her nightdress for warmth and leaves the girls dormitory.

She's going to speak to him. She's going to demand an explanation. But there's no harm in asking for that explanation half-dressed, by the side of the lake, in moonlight is there? Just a little atmosphere to tip the scales in her favour?

He didn't offer to meet her at the stairs and take her outside under his invisibility cloak. She tiptoes through the corridors without the aid of wandlight, frightened of being seen and reflects that this is just another way in which he is becoming estranged from her. He would never have let her wander the castle alone before.

When she arrives at the side of the lake, she sees the cloak, lying draped over a log and knows that he is here already. Footprints marked in crushed grass make their way from the log through the dew and into the forbidden forest.

She's going to speak to him. She's going to demand an explanation, but perhaps it won't hurt very much to follow him a little first. Just to see? After all, he could be in trouble. She is ashamed to realise that danger hadn't been her first thought. Her initial reaction had been that he was keeping an earlier moonlight assignation with another girl.

_One way to find out..._

Quiet as a mouse, she follows the footprints between the trees, they lead into a little clearing. She can see Harry, but he can't see her. He's alone.

_Good._

She makes her way around the edge of the clearing, too embarrassed to announce her presence, when Harry glances at his watch, then suddenly turns around and leaves abruptly. Alone in the woods, she looks at her own watch. It's midnight exactly, that magical, dangerous time between today and tomorrow where anything seems possible and nothing is certain.

She was supposed to meet Harry beside the lake at midnight. She was supposed to speak to him. She was supposed to demand an explanation. Suddenly however, she would much rather find out what he was doing in this clearing in the forest in the middle of the night.

She steps into the clearing between the trees, a shaft of pale moonlight hits the ground and illuminates the sack.

She sees that sack and suddenly she is afraid. What could Harry have been doing here in the woods alone? Why was he keeping secrets from her? What's in the sack?

_She wonders who her boyfriend really is._

What's in the sack?

_She's going to speak to him. She's going to demand an explanation, but..._

What's in the sack?

She takes her courage between her teeth and looks into the sack. It's dark inside. Dark as dark. It's full of something, but she can't see what.

_Her curiosity will be the death of her._

She doesn't want to touch it. Doesn't want to stick her hand into that frightening blackness, but at the same time, she's terrified of not knowing.

Holding her breath, she plunges her arm into the sack up to the elbow. It feels the same all the way down. She'd been half expecting a black-hole or a bottomless pit. Half expecting that as soon as her hand entered the sack, some unseen monster would bite it off at the wrist. Instead the contents are soft and ticklish...

_...and familiar._

She pulls a handful of the stuff into the moonlight to look at. Familiar, jet-black hairs fall between her fingers and back into the sack.

She stands there in the moonlight for a long time, thinking about all sorts of things. Mostly she thinks about hair. Harry's hair always grew so fast and you only need a tiny bit for polyjuice, but this sack is big.

_huge_

And nobody would need this much hair unless...

_unless they knew they couldn't get any more of it. Not ever._

In the silent moonlight, at the moment when today becomes tomorrow, she mourns for Harry, who must have been gone for a long time, but was never missed.

Then she remembers her date beside the lake and a cold weight settles in her stomach.

_Why didn't she bring her wand?_

She can't get back to the castle without being seen, but she walks the long way around the edge of the forest and approaches him from as far away from the clearing as she dares.

"You're late. Is everything okay?"

And she doesn't speak to him, she doesn't demand an explanation. She doesn't say anything at all, because she's too frightened to speak, but she kisses him, because in her terror and desparation, she can't think of anything else to do.

He slides the winter cloak from her shoulders and looks at the flimsy nightdress beneath. There is no lust in his eyes and Harry would surely have looked with lust. There is only shrewd calculation. The knowledge that she has no pockets and therefore carries no wand.

His eyes drift away and she follows his gaze to the log beside which two sets of footprints vanish between the trees towards the clearing.

By the time she looks away from the damning marks in the grass, his wand is already out.

As she dies, she wonders who her boyfriend really is. 


End file.
